At the pinnacle of his career, Peter Shoniker met the pope and could count generals, police chiefs, judges, and politicians among his coterie of friends and acquaintances. At his nadir, he was a shattered man sitting in a Toronto courtroom listening to his own lawyer, the redoubtable Eddie Greenspan, explain to a judge that his client was someone who lived in a “genuine fantasy world” — sometimes referred to as “Pete’s World” by one psychiatrist — because he frequently couldn’t distinguish fact from fiction when he was stoked on booze and pills and flummoxed by a sleeping disorder. Which, in recent years, was pretty much most of the time.

To drive home this point, Greenspan then played a portion of a taped phone conversation between Shoniker and an undercover RCMP officer in which Shoniker was heard saying: “When I was a prosecutor I got shot, and I have some bad spinal cord injuries. So it takes about a half an hour, 45 minutes every morning to do my stretching and shit like that. Which is why I’m, you know, decorated, knighted by the Queen and knighted by the Pope and everybody and decorated by the American government.”

Greenspan then made it clear his client was never shot. Neither was he knighted and decorated, for that matter.

It was Aug. 18, 2006, and the 49-year-old Shoniker was witnessing the pieces of his life being publicly dissected in a Toronto courtroom. Out in full force was the media, eager to hear the prurient details of how one of Canada’s most well-connected lawyers — someone who glided easily among the powerbrokers of law enforcement, the judicial system, and Ontario’s Tory party — had plummeted from grace so spectacularly. In fact, on this morning, a couple of his prominent friends were in attendance offering their support, namely former Toronto police chief Julian Fantino and retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie. Everyone wanted to hear just how Shoniker managed to entangle himself in an RCMP sting that nabbed him for laundering $750,000, $50,000 of which he stole.

Shoniker was pleading guilty and the hearing was for Justice Douglas Cunningham’s benefit to determine an appropriate sentence, based on whether he was convinced Shoniker was either a Machiavellian thief who clearly knew what he was doing, or merely an alcoholic braggart — evidenced by his boasts of being “untouchable” by police and “no fucking judge” would ever authorize a wiretap against him — who had fallen on hard times and was vulnerable to the RCMP’s overtures.

The hearing was emotional and revealing, delving into the many riddles behind his rise and fall, with Shoniker emerging as an enigmatic mass of contradictions, someone who could be enormously generous as well as unethical and ruthless. “He’s known to colour the truth a lot, that’s part of his persona; he was always a bit of a braggart and he let people believe he was something he never was,” admits Ron Sandelli, a close friend and former police officer who’s the Toronto Blue Jays’ head of security. “He thinks that, too, people won’t be forgiving over what happened. Those who do know the truth are very forgiving and saying, ‘There for the grace of God go I.’”

*     *     *

Peter Shoniker grew up knowing and tasting power. He was one of four children sired by Edward “Eddie” Shoniker who was an influential player in Ontario Tory circles as well as in the transportation world, rising to become chair of the provincial transport board in the late 1950s. Twice Eddie was honoured by the Queen for “valuable service to the nation.” He was also a bagman for the Tory party, part of the “Catholic mafia” that held enormous sway in the policing, judicial, and political spheres of Ontario’s post-war establishment. The Shoniker household was regularly filled with cops, police chiefs, and Tory politicians. “[Eddie] had close relationships with former chiefs and was always a great supporter of the police,” recalls former Toronto police chief William McCormack, a family friend who met Peter Shoniker when he was seven years old.